AWhile most river rowers take to the wind and rain during the dark winter months, a new breed is honing their skills in sunnier climes surrounded by sun, sand and waves, all the while dreaming of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Of the 17 sports that have proposed an additional discipline to the IOC, rowing has come out on top with the addition of the beach sprints format to the Los Angeles 2028 programme. While many may have noticed the addition of five new sports in baseball, cricket, football, lacrosse and squash, a small revolution is taking place on the water within a sport that will no longer have a lightweight category, but will feature five coastal rowing events in 2028.
Coastal Paddling Sprints shakes up this more traditional and predictable sport by taking the core elements of paddling – the need for high levels of physical fitness and psychological toughness – and adding new layers of risk and a beach party atmosphere. The discipline involves a head-to-head format and begins on land where athletes run onto the beach and jump into their boats at the water’s edge, then race around a buoy before scrambling back to dry land, jumping from their boats and running toward shore. With frequently close finishes, their final move is to throw themselves into the air to reach the finish line bell first and land, usually, with a face full of sand.
In a world where people have greater choice over which sports they can watch and participate in, and global federations of junior sports are considering how to maintain their popularity and relevance, coastal paddling offers a less predictable and more entertaining form, while at the same time reconnecting with a historical activity dating back to around 1900 BC in ancient Egypt where it was an important mode of transport.
We may be primarily a football nation, but this is a great addition to Team GB because we also excel at sit-down sports and boating is part of our national island identity. We are also gaining new momentum to revitalize sport and activity around the coast in areas that have become some of the most socially and economically challenged parts of each of the indigenous nations. The Welsh Government identified that funding for major sporting events was going to major cities and recognized the importance of reaching and engaging a different part of the population by hosting the World Coastal Rowing Championships at Sandersfoot and developing the Wales International Coastal Center there.
Scotland has embraced the sport with the University of St Andrews investing in wider flatboats used for paddling on rougher waves and rising to become one of 11 British Coastal Rowing Academies at East Sands Beach. Meanwhile, Glenarm in County Antrim hosted the All-Ireland Coastal Rowing Championships this summer for both beach sprints and endurance coastal rowing events. Coastal academies in England include clubs in Tynemouth, Scarborough, Whitby and Lowestoft, along with several south coast clubs with a strong heritage in the activity. Sandbanks in Dorset was the venue for the first Commonwealth Beach Race Championships in 2018, followed by Namibia in 2022, and Barbados next weekend.
Britain’s Jane Batten, a member of the silver-medal-winning quadruple rowing crew from Sydney 2000 and one of the first British women rowers to stand on the podium, has masterminded the logistical and political path to get to this point. As Chair of the World Rowing Coastal Commission in her spare time (and Executive Vice President of England Volleyball the rest of the time), Patten describes the fields of Coastal and Classic Rowing as “the yin and yang of the sport”, different but beautifully complementary, both at their core about great boating skills and sporting prowess and yet each offering a contrasting spectacle to watch or participate in.
Boat costs and accessibility issues have been cleverly reduced – wider boats are suitable for beginners and those racing at the highest level, unlike very narrow hulls that require significant experience to master paddling in still water. Countries do not have to fly their own equipment as a pool of boats is provided, adding another unpredictable factor as participants will not pilot the actual boat they will be racing in until two days before the competition. At that point, they will need to study the boats and especially the placements of the fins on the hull, which will be key to working out perfect ‘spin the buoy’ techniques, all the while knowing that they will need to judge everything back in the day once they see the size of the waves Mother Nature chooses to throw at them.
Five-time champion and Olympian Emma Twigg of New Zealand has reignited her love of being on a boat by practicing coastal discipline and won the recent World Championships in Türkiye. Twigg told me she fell in love with beach sprints because of the “closeness of the race” and “beach volleyball atmosphere,” plus the advantage that you can watch the entire race from start to finish in the small stadium area to avoid one of the insurmountable challenges of paddling in Olympic backwaters where you can never see the full 2 kilometers from one vantage point.
Like their classical, still-water cousins, coastal rowers will still need to develop a formidable physiology that can run and have the endurance to compete in up to three races a day. Each race is an all-out, lung-crushing effort with the painful, shoulder-shaking effort of doing a 180-degree turn around the buoy mid-race. New Zealand’s Olympic runner Finn Hamill missed the buoy by centimeters to crash out of the latest World Championships, while the front-runner from Germany faltered in the semi-final in the beach sprint, allowing Spaniard Anders Martin to come through in the final seconds to face American champion Chris Buck in the final, who held on to retain his title. There is a mix of current rowers moving into this new discipline and others coming from coastal clubs, while sports scientists and performance managers work to define what future Coastal Olympians will look like.
The world’s best coastal rowers will share the venue in Long Beach Los Angeles alongside open water swimmers, windsurfers and surfing and kitesurfing champions over the two weeks of the Games and will show a different side to this seemingly strait-laced sport. Paddling’s answer to Snowcross, BMX, and beach volleyball is coming to Los Angeles, but if you live near the coast, it might be coming to a beach near you soon, too.